Little Girl Lost
by Drag0nst0rm
Summary: Her father's training was supposed to make her comfortable anywhere in the world. It was supposed to teach her how to find her way home no matter what happened. Somehow, though, the more she trains, the more lost she feels. (Companion to The Lost Ones).
1. Lost

**Disclaimer: I have never been to the Yatir Forest in Israel. I'm sure there will be many, many inaccuracies in this fic.**

 **PLEASE CHECK BOTTOM FOR WARNINGS.**

* * *

It was not the first time her father had left them in Yatir Forest and told them to make their separate ways back to where he would be waiting. It was not the easiest training exercise he had given them, but it was one of the more enjoyable. Walking through the woods was peaceful, and somehow the silence managed to block out the sound of the explosion that had killed Tali far better than the noise of the city did.

But the whole point of that silence was not having to think about it, so Ziva skirted that thought quickly and kept walking.

The first time she had done this, she had been uncertain her skills would be up to surviving in the wilderness. Now it was easy.

If she wanted to beat Ari back to their father, however, she needed to pick up the pace.

Which would be easier if she could be certain she was heading in the right direction.

She knew what general direction she was going in, of course. She had been checking her position against the sun all day. She was eight, not stupid.

But it was almost noon now, and approximations and mistakes could add up to costly time. She must be close to where her father waited by now. If she had a better vantage point, perhaps she could see his vehicle and have a better idea how to angle her approach.

She picked a tree at random and started scrambling up it. She was only two branches up when she remembered her father's lecture on how to choose the best tree. She was supposed to consider height, location, and the health of the tree.

She had already started climbing this one. She would just remember next time.

She wasn't nearly high enough yet, so she kept climbing. The bark was rough on her hands, but she kept going. She could not let small pains stop her if she was going to be of use to her father.

Her palms were slick with sweat, but she kept pulling herself up. She was near the top now. She would stop soon and look out.

She reached for the next branch.

It snapped.

She cried out as she fell. She hit other branches on her way down with bruising impact, but none of them stopped her fall.

It did not take many seconds to fall.

Each one felt like a century.

She should twist a certain way, hadn't that been what her father -

The forest floor had been soft under her feet.

The way her neck twisted when she landed, there wouldn't have been a cushion on Earth that was soft enough.

Ziva got up. Her body did not.

She laid back down and tried to fit herself back inside it.

The blood still running in it felt good, but her body would not move with her.

She stood back up and reached for her own ankles. She would just have to drag herself forward then.

Her hands slid right through.

Her chin started to shake, but she refused to cry. She would not. She could not. Crying helped nothing.

She had to find her father. She had caught a glimpse, briefly, from the tree.

She started walking.

She didn't bother to curve around the trees.

Her father had told them to walk through their injuries. She would make him proud.

It was only an hour later that she spotted him sitting inside his vehicle. He got out when he saw her. "Ziva! Well done. You have beaten your brother back." He looked proud of her.

It was the first time she had beaten him. His legs were longer than hers.

She smiled back at him a bit shakily. "Father, something happened."

"Oh?" He walked toward her. "What was that, my Ziva?"

He crouched down to put his hands on her shoulders.

They slid right through.

Her father reeled back.

Ari burst from the forest behind her. Ziva cursed herself. If he was that close behind her, she should have heard. She had been distracted. Father would not like that. She looked at him anxiously.

Father was still staring at her in horror.

"Father, I found - I saw - " Ari panted. Then he saw Ziva standing there and his eyes went wide.

Ziva scowled. "I fell."

Her father got up and stumbled back.

"Get in the car," he ordered both of them.

"Father?" Ziva asked. She had never heard that tone in his voice before. Not even when Tali -

 _Oh._

The full magnitude of what had happened hit her.

Father wouldn't look at her. "Into the car, both of you."

Ari was still staring at her. "But what about - "

"Into the car!" Her father roared.

She looked to Ari. Her whole body was shaking. It shouldn't, she had to be strong, but she had fallen, and she needed something. _Anything._

Ari was staring at her father with a fury she had never seen, but he tried to push it back when he glanced at her.

"It will be all right, little one," he told her.

She hated when he called her that, but he had said it would be all right, and he, at least, was looking at her, so she got in the car and wondered why she could curl up on the seat but she could not touch her father.

Of course, she couldn't feel the sun warmed leather, and she wasn't pressing into it, so maybe she was not really touching it at all.

Ari still had an energy drink in his backpack. He took it out silently as her father started the car.

"What are you doing?" she hissed when he unscrewed the lid and made to pour it over her.

Ari pressed a finger to his lips and poured it over her head.

She nearly punched him before she realized it felt . . . nice. It trickled through her hair and down into her shoulders.

And when Ari reached across to her, his hand did not slide through.

She huddled into his arm for warmth for as long as the sugar buzz lasted. Ari glared at the back of their father's head.

Their father acted as if he were the only one in the car.

Ziva did not understand why he was not proud of her. She still had not cried.

* * *

 **WARNINGS: Death of a child and neglect, or at least really bad parental judgement. Potential warning for disturbing imagery.**


	2. Falling

**WARNING: For nonsuicidal self harm, child assassins, and some disturbing imagery.**

* * *

Before she fell, Ziva could not see ghosts, a serious failing in an intelligence agent. Now, of course, she saw everything, so she should be grateful, really. She was of much more use to her father and her country this way.

She told herself this firmly as her father's secretary walked straight through her and didn't even notice.

Ziva could have drained the blood right out of her if she had wanted.

That sort of thought occurred to her more and more now, but it scared her, so she stuck a lid on it and slipped through the wall so she could see her father.

 _(He doesn't look at her. Not once.)_

Even with all the precautions people took against ghosts, clever ones could still get anywhere. Do anything.

Ziva had always been clever, so she learned how to hide herself, how to shrink, how to fade. She learned how to use her will to move objects.

She also learned how it felt to stand on the carpet of an expensive hotel room while blood seeped into her hands.

It was nice to be able to make herself seen again, but she couldn't stop thinking about that feeling. She didn't remember what the man's face looked like, but she remembered the way the color of the blood had almost but not quite matched the carpet.

 _(Ari finds her crying silently in a broom closet. He sits with her and runs his fingers through her hair. He no longer has to make an effort to do so._

 _The warmth feels nice until their father finds them. He pulls Ari away into a meeting that she listens in on. It ends in shouting and terrible words._

 _She doesn't see Ari again for three years. When she finally does, he smiles at her, but he doesn't touch her._

 _Not once.)_

Age was irrelevant to a ghost. Ziva could appear any way she wanted.

She wasn't sure how old she was when she first pretended to be in her twenties. She just remembered, later, how she'd been drawn to a low-cut blue dress because of the color, and her father had told her, "No. Not that one."

She'd picked a modest green and held onto his words all throughout her mission.

 _(It is years before she slows down enough to realize when her birthday is._

 _"My birthday is today," she tells her father. Perhaps he will take on the trip he had promised before her unfortunate fall._

 _For a moment, her father's expression crumples into something impossibly broken before he is his unflappable self once more._

 _"Your next mission starts today," he counters. "Terrorists will not wait while we celebrate."_

 _"Yes, Abba," she says, but when she has a moment to herself on her mission, she buys herself a slice of cake._

 _She stares at it for a long moment before she realizes that it probably contains trace amounts of salt, and thus, she cannot eat it.)_

She lost count of her missions somewhere around the time her head started to cloud. Rivkin was the one who taught her how to stop it.

"I prefer a nice cup of St. John's Wort, but everyone has their preferences," he told her.

She preferred iron. It was the most efficient way to deal with the problem, even if she had the sense that it would have worried Tali and horrified her mother.

 _(She does it right before a briefing once, in front of her father._

Tell me to stop and I will _, she thinks but does not say._

 _Her father says nothing at all for the first thirty minutes of the briefing which is most unlike him._

 _She considers stopping in recognition of that, but after her next mission, she surrenders to the iron again.)_

Ziva was patient, but even she had her limits.

Her father ordered her to take down her brother, and Ziva thought that she could go no further.

She went. She shot him.

His blood called to her, and she fled from the basement, trying to remember how his hand had felt in her hair.

 _(She remembers eventually. It only makes her feel more like her insides are being slowly devoured._

 _"I have an in with the NCIS director," she tells her father. "I would be a valuable liaison."_

 _"America is dangerous," he points out as he flips through files._

So is what you have done to your children, _she thinks but does not say._

 _"You want this?" Eli David finally asks. He looks at a point just over her left shoulder._

 _"Yes," she lies._

 _She does not want to go to America. She wants her father to tell her how sorry he is and that she has misunderstood this whole time. She wants Tali, her mother, and Ari to still be alive. She wants her family back._

 _But she hates the idea of going to America less than she hates the idea of staying here, so she says, "I think I can gain valuable information."_

 _She tries to tell herself that her father's sole reason for agreeing is not just to get her out of his sight.)_

She went fully intending to do her duty to Mossad.

Somewhere in the middle of Tony trusting her, Abby wholeheartedly embracing her, Tim helping her prank Tony, and Gibbs running a hand through her hair, she realized that perhaps she was compromised.

Several miles past compromised, as Tony would say.

 _(The night after Senior is arrested, Tony is lying in the big bed in his room that he does not need. Ziva is perched on the end of it in an attempt to get him to come watch a movie with her and McGee. She does not think he should be alone tonight._

 _"I still love him, you know," Tony said abruptly._

 _Ziva only blinks at him in surprise. She has never doubted it._

 _"But I think I love Gibbs more," he adds like it is a confession._

 _"I also still love my father," she offers._

 _She does not love Gibbs more, or at least she does not think she does. But she_ does _love Gibbs more securely, because, at least for now, he loves her back._

 _Her father loves her too, of course, but he loves and mourns his living daughter, not the monster his dead one has become._

 _She suspects something of her thoughts have shown on her face, because Tony suddenly reverses his arguments and agrees to go watch a film._

 _When he lets her pick which one, her suspicions become certainties, so she throws a pillow at him. It is not very mature, but then, she is only a child, after all.)_


	3. Found

**PLEASE NOTE: Do NOT read this chapter until you've finished The Lost Ones. This story has always been more companion than prequel, and this chapter takes us into sequel territory.**

* * *

She came back to herself slowly. First, simply an urge to get off the street that drove her into abandoned houses and decaying barns. Then a memory of planning and necessity that kept her moving on before Paranormal Services could come in and clean it out of her and those like her.

 _Ziva._

It had gotten lost in the blood for a moment.

 _(A moment? A day? A week? What was the date? How long had it been?)_

She scribbled her name on a piece of paper and stuck it into her arm where she'd once kept a knife.

Blood, no matter how much of it there had been, faded in potency in time. She could think now. She could want more than the blood of passing vermin.

There was a different kind of warmth she craved even more than blood now, but it was not safe.

 _(Ziva David, fallen so far. Where's your precious self-control now?)_

 _(Here, she answered and spent the day mingling at a shopping center.)_

Safe, then, in terms of physical danger, but there were other risks to consider.

They did still _want_ her to come home, did they not?

 _(When you're ready, you come home. No matter what happens or what you do, come_ home _.)_

Pay phones were not as common as they once were, and she had no change for one in any case. Instead, she assumed her youngest form and managed, by putting on wide eyes and trembling lips, to convince a store clerk to allow her to borrow the clerk's cell.

The cell phone was picked up on the second ring.

"Gibbs?" she asked hesitantly.

"Ziva."

He sounded as if he would have said more, but she hurried on before he could. "I cannot go back to being an agent. It would be . . . too risky. But I am better now. Much better. Is it - " She swallowed, an unnecessary gesture Mossad had tried to train out of her. "Is it too late to come home?"

There was a moment of silence where something in her tensed, prepared for rejection, but then Gibbs' voice was back, rough and filled with more warmth than any amount of blood. "It's never too late. Where are you?"

That he would come get her sent a pleasant warmth rushing through her, but she glanced at the clock and shook her head, even though he couldn't see her. "You are working, yes? I can make my own way back to the house."

"Where. Are. You?" Gibbs growled. She could hear him moving on the other end of the line.

She told him.

"I'll be there in ten minutes," he promised.

She expected him to hang up then, but instead there was another pause, a brief scuffle, and then Tony's voice came back on the line. "Ziva!" he crowed. "Tell McGrabby here to stop trying to snatch the phone away, it's not nice."

He startled a laugh out of her. "I have missed you, Tony. All of you."

It was an admission of weakness, but for once, that did not seem so bad.


End file.
